“Memory gives an image that remains…”

A beautiful rain today and the promise of spring. A riot of daffodils on Sarah Wells Trail. The third day of No Jury Duty for potential Juror # 1089…a mini holiday for me as a self-employed person. I decide to visit my father and show him yesterday’s post. I take his file of writing.

The minute I show him the file, he looks both bemused and perplexed. He remembers…he remembers everything. He smiles as he reads this poem that he wrote in tenth grade aloud:

To Nature

How pleasant it is to turn the mind
To that which lies beyond, behind
The veil of living….
Another world
Where no insignia is unfurled,
No potentate directs your moves,
Here you may wander where you choose
And see the sun’s bright lances burst
The clouds of nights; and see earth’s thirst
Quenched by the long refreshing rain;
The slowly creeping ivy strain
For something past its reach; the charm
Of a little cabin with in the arm
Of some great massive tree; a log
That spurts forth fire; a wisp of fog;
A grove of cool refreshing pines
Through which a brook uncurls and winds;
A view on high; the come-and-find-me
Call of the bob-white; and the kindly
Summer breeze’s gentle sermon;
The trees of winter in their coats of ermine;
The secret haunts of forest creatures;
Autumn display that gayly features
Leaves of every assortment; the ways of
The lively young birds that sing in praise of
The morning sun; wide islands of cotton
In a sea of sky; the winter forgotten
As summer draws near; a cool shadowed cave;
The slumberous sun beginning to pave
The roadway of night…Now falls this veil
Of living again but over the pale
And colorless days there lingers on
The afterglow. More richly drawn
Than an artist’s picture, memory gives
An image that remains and lives.

– KENNETH FORD BEVAN –

He tells me about Miss Isabelle Williams, his tenth grade English teacher who inspired him to write. How his sister hated her; thought she was a slob…in his words, “she always wore yesterday’s lunch on her blouse, but I loved her!” He describes her house on Warren Street; the poetry she read in class; his burning desire to write a good poem. “Memory gives an image that remains and lives.”

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